'The horse has left the barn,' acting Director of National Intelligence Maguire testifies during the House Intelligence Committee hearing on a whistleblower's memorandum. More:
WASHINGTON - A whistleblower report released on Thursday said President Donald Trump not only abused his office in attempting to solicit Ukraine’s interference in the 2020 U.S. election for his own political benefit, but that the White House also tried to “lock down” evidence about that conduct.
Democrats have accused Trump of soliciting a foreign power to smear a domestic political rival. The Ukraine controversy follows U.S. intelligence conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election with a campaign of hacking and propaganda to boost Trump’s candidacy. The whistleblower’s concerns did not end with Trump’s conversation with Zelenskiy. The next day, the whistleblower report said, Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker and Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland met with Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian political figures and advised them “about how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the president had made of Mr Zelenskiy.”
Maguire frustrated committee Democrats when he declined to answer when was asked if he had discussed the whistleblower complaint with Trump, though he said he spoke with the president often. Maguire refused to say whether the whistleblower’s allegations merited investigation and said he did not think it was “appropriate” for him to publicly rebuke Trump’s attacks on the whistleblower.
“I am not familiar with any prior instances where a whistleblower complaint touched on such complicated and sensitive issues including executive privilege. I believe that this matter is unprecedented,” Maguire said. Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is sworn in to testifify before a House Intelligence Committee hearing on the handling of the whistleblower complaint in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 26, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis
“Instead the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature,” the report said. “One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.”
The complaint cited two instances that might have a connection with “the overall effort to pressure Ukrainian leadership.” According to U.S. officials, Trump instructed Vice President Mike Pence to cancel his trip to Ukraine to attend Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May, sending a lower-level Cabinet member instead.
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